I.C.T.

I was in Milton Keynes today so had to try a few caches at lunch time. Is it something in the water down there, but why are there so many "camo 35mm in ivy covered tree" caches in MK?

Is it a lack of imagination or do the locals really like rummaging around in the green stuff? Surely (don't call me Shirley) with all the parks and other green areas, there must be plenty of places to hide a slightly larger box or if it has to be a micro, some other location - in a tree, base of tree, under stone etc. etc.

It makes my blood boil !!!

Rant over - well that one at least! Next rant is STAMPS and not the one from the Post Office. I mean those useful ones that let you put your personal mark in the log. Now mine's not huge (stop tittering at the back) but if I'm doing a micro (having extracted it from the ICT) my stamp usually takes up 2 lines; which some may think extravagant. But what about this one I spotted today...
Count them with me;
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8 and a bit lines !!!

I popped out last night with Sue and the geo-mutt to bag some of HillHappy's latest batch and ran into Taff Hunter - nice couple, so we did a few together. Of course, we had to do a maintenance visit on KissKiss while we were out.

Apart from my ravings, I've had a couple of good caching days and am looking forward to the event in Knowle, hoping to meet lots of people.

That's all for now - cheers.

My Oregon got lost

Out this evening, enjoying the longer evenings (well one at least), doing the Hidden Gems series in Perry Bar when my Oregon tells me that the cache is a further 180m away which happens to be the other side of a tall steel fence. I checked on my Nokia N95 and that told me that I was 20m away. I used the Nokia to home in on the cache as the terrain suited the clue and there is was. However, the Oregon was still indicating nearly 200m to go!

I switched off and back on and moved on to the next cache. The N95 was spot on but the Oregon, again, 200m off.

The battery was showing 1 bar but I'd had no warnings of low battery. I shall try new batteries tomorrow and I hope that is the cause of the problem.

By the way, the Hidden Gems series is a true hidden gem and well worth as visit.

It's not about the numbers

Seventy Two Caches

Stokesy was Home Alone last weekend and had decided that he was going to do a spot of caching (as you do) and fancied a bit of a binge on Sunday. "Where are WE going?" I asked, inviting myself along. After rejecting an inviting series of letterbox hybrids near Blackburn, we decided on the North section of the UK Mega Series, between Fleet and Basingstoke in Hamshire. The whole series comprises of 126 caches, mostly regular sizes and nearly all with clues.

Word must had gotten out because I was informed that Steve-e-b would be joining us. The final seat was reserved for Stokesy's hound, Sophie.

Stokeys picked my up from Balders Hall just before 6am. and we had Steve in the car before half six, heading towards the M40. The M25 was fairly quiet (probably the best time to do it) and we arrived at the day's parking space, boots on and away by 8.30.

The first few went by easily and we made good time pausing for refreshments after our 20th find of the day. We passed close to Odiham airfield (which reminded me of my time at Birmingham airport) and we strolled along the picturesque and very clean Bassingstoke canal. I should also add that the canal is very popular with dog walkers, so much so that Sophie just had to pick a fight - they do say dogs resemble their owners!

As the afternoon wore on, and the relentless sun beat down, the legs where starting to protest but we pushed on, completing our trek in just under 9 hours. We all know that it's not about the numbers but the stats. are...

72 caches along 18 miles in 9 hours...

8 caches an hour or 4 caches per mile.

Arriving back at the car, somewhat fatigued, we all agreed that it had been a cracking day out. Doing 70+ in 9 hours makes 100 in 24 hours seem very do-able but where? We shall also have to return to Hampshire to do the other half.

Nokia N95

As some of you may be aware, I've got me a new phone. It's the Nokia N95-8GB. This smartphone has a built in GPS (I'm not sure if it's just mine but the GPS isn't very good), 8GB of user RAM, internet access plus lots of other goodies. The N95 runs the Symbian operating system meaning that there are lots of nice add on programs for this smartphone.

One of the first things that I managed to do was install TomTom using an external Bluetooth GPS which works very well. I've got a GSAK macro which exports to TomTom .OV2 format with different icons for the different cache types. TomTom also (annoyingly, according to Sue) beeps when in the vicinity of a cache.

Last week, I splashed out on View Ranger (VR). This excellent piece of software is very similar to the Windows Mobile version of Memory Map (MM). The 1:50,000 scale Ordnance Survey maps are (c) 2008 and are more up to date than my old version of MM, for example the "new" A5 from Lichfield is shown on ViewRanger but not MM.

I've missed not having the OS maps with me (after the card reader part of my HP WinMobile device packed up) and it was nice to welcome an old friend back. The Oregon is very nice but I do miss my OS maps and I'm not forking out £100+ for each national park !

The installation of the software was simple and quick but copying the maps to the N95 took a while with the whole of Great Britain taking up about 2.5GB. The software reads .gpx files and I found a GSAK macro which exports the cache details with a bit more finesse than reading the native .gpx files. I changed the default icon from a rather ugly ammo box to a green ball which makes homing in a lot better.

However, all the caches are displayed as the same icon. After using Lordelph's Lovely Icons on MM, I decided to modify the GSAK macro to display different icons for each cache type. I also changed the way the caches are listed from GC numbers to the cache name which I find a lot more useful.

I now have the whole of the UK at 1:50,000, a load of unfound caches with their own symbols and desciptions; all on my phone!

Happy New Year

Firstly, let me wish all my readers a Happy New Year. 2008 went rapidly downhill and personally I've got to be interviewed for my own job or face redundancy.

On the caching front, my stats. dropped like a stone towards the end of 2008, with November being my worst month of the year with only 34 finds during 4 days of caching. This just happens to coincide with my bout of Man-Flu but hopefully, I'm just about over it as we enter the new year.

2008 ended with a frantic dash out on the 30th to bring my year end total to a nice round 2300. Then Stokesy spoils it all by putting out two new caches yesterday which I just had to go for. In my haste in getting the co-ordinates for the first one and getting out of the door, I missed the other until I returned, elated after an FTF.

I had to wait for Mrs. Balders to get home from work before I could get out again but was rewarded with another FTF - what a way to end the year!

New Year's Day found me dropping Mrs. Balders at work for 8am then heading off towards Redditch for a spot of you know what. I picked up a few of The Stranglers caches on the way and started the year with 19 caches found.

With a bit of luck, I should reach 3000 by the end of the year, needing, on average, about 2 caches per day.

I mentioned a few days ago that I'd upgraded my Oregon software to version 2.7. An extra benefit I've discovered is that waypoint co-ordinates are a LOT easier to enter, so much so that it is now usable!

Also, the problems I had before with the unit locking up when plugging into the PC have totally gone - it hasn't played up once since the upgrade.

Well, that 's about it for now. Up-coming this month we have a meet at The Barn, Hockley Heath on the 28th ( link ) and the next Brummie Meet sometime in February.

Kev goes caching

Dropped Sue at work then I was off up the A38 heading towards a bunch of caches near Derby (Black Widow country). I totally failed to find "Sidetracked Willington" (again) and have now officially given up on it!

I managed to pick up a few drive-bys then parked up and took a stroll along a chilly canal finding a few more on the way. A short drive brought me to another stretch of cache strewn canal. Not all the finds were straight froward but at least with an out and back course, you can have another stab on the return.

After these "mini-series" or power trails, I cut across country heading roughly back home. One cache I had to visit was Heron's Wood. At my Birthday Bash, I was given a LARGE travel bug which I was challenged to hide. This container swallowed the TB easily. I was on my way to this cache when a passing mountain biker asked if I was geocaching - is it THAT obvious?

I was very cold so I wound up my caching activities around one and made my way home, finally picking up Stokesy's Collector 4 cache, which is only 120m from home on the way.

Oregon Update

Browsing the Garmin website, I noticed that software version 2.70 was available. I plugging in and upgraded from 2.50.

No great difference it's mainly little bug fixes but no mention of my problem (with the Oregon - not the other problem!!!). However, I've turned tracking back on and so far (touch wood) it connects to the PC without any of the difficulties I used to encounter. Let's hope the firmware updat has fixed the problem.